no quarrel?

Taipei Times - archives: "NO QUARRELS?

Every US president since Wilson has, at least once while in office, uttered the phrase “have no quarrel with” a foreign enemy. Such statements are typically made only days, sometimes hours, before the first US bombs fall. Former US president Bill Clinton promised on the eve of the bombing of Serbia that “I cannot emphasize too strongly that the United States has no quarrel with the Serbian people.”

US President Barack Obama promised from the campaign trail that “We have no quarrel with the Iranian people. They know that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is reckless, irresponsible and inattentive to their day-to-day needs.”

Presidents employ such language for good reason. They know their public, a self-styled melting pot of peoples, would rather fight dictators than brothers and cousins abroad.

Indeed, Wilson’s initial formulation grew from a demographic and political quandary. More than one-third of Americans in 1917 could trace their heritage back to Germany and its allies. Wilson could not implore his people to “kill the Krauts,” as British or French leaders frequently did, because so many of Wilson’s soldiers were, by ethnicity at least, Krauts themselves.

He instead rhetorically transformed US soldiers from fratricidal killers into liberators of their ancient fatherland."